A study confirming the findings of Susan Kenyon's lab that heat shock proteins also play a significant role in extending lifespan have been confirmed independently in this article entitled "Search for Methuselah Genes Heats Up" at the SAGE Knowledge Environment.
Article.
You need a subscription to read the entire thing but if someone would like a look at my copy, let me know.
Juicy bits..
Over the past 10 years, molecular geneticists have identified signal transduction pathways that regulate longevity in yeast, worms, flies, and mice. The inactivation of these pathways causes changes in gene expression that are normally associated with entry into periods of starvation. Among the genes that are consistently up-regulated in long-lived mutants are those that encode stress resistance proteins, specifically proteins that protect against oxidative and thermal damage. Until recently, expression of pro-longevity stress resistance genes in the worm Caenorhabditis elegans was believed to be mostly under the control of the DAF-16 transcription factor (see Johnson Review). In a recent article in Molecular Biology of the Cell, Morley and Morimoto (1) show that stress resistance genes that extend longevity are also regulated by the transcriptional activator heat shock factor 1 (HSF-1) independently of DAF-16, confirming recent studies by the Kenyon laboratory (2) (see "Vital Collaboration").
The links between the pathways induced by CR and the role which protein degradation, sugar metabolism and free radical generation are being elucidated with changes in single tissues of the levels of these proteins having body wide effects. I especially like this closing paragraph statement which points out the power of the converging efforts in biotech to understand the causes of aging..
The combination of studies aimed at separating the cell-autonomous from cell-nonautonomous effects of longevity-enhancing proteins in multicellular organisms, with further studies in unicellular S. cerevisiae, other animal systems, and mammalian cell cultures, should soon illuminate the molecular and cellular networks responsible for the regulation of life span in eukaryotes.
We'll find out what the 'tricky' DNA is up to yet..
